Facebook Users Won't Pay

My friend Dan Peguine sent me a screenshot of an interesting sponsored poll he saw last night. The question posed to the survey recipients was “Would you pay $3.99 a month to not ever see ads on Facebook?” A whopping 95% said no and 4% responded yes. This compares to statistics that Marshall Kirkpatrick published last night suggesting that 11% of YouTube users would be willing to pay for an adless version of YouTube.

You could argue that this survey was flawed given that the question didn’t simply ask if users would pay, it asked a specific amount. Thus, had you switched the monthly amount to $1.99 the numbers could have been significantly different. Additionally, sponsored polls are asked to between 250 and 1000 users. Depending on the number asked, the polls could be statistically irrelevant. I was going to attempt to create a different poll with a more objective question but I didn’t feel like spending $250 just to test out my theory.

Personally, at present Facebook ads are not extremely invasive. If Facebook decides to increase their advertising levels to be similar to MySpace, my opinion might rapidly change. Would you pay for an adfree version of Facebook?